If your company relies on common Salesforce use cases to manage customer information, sales, or marketing, it’s crucial you test the CRM properly. While Salesforce provides standard functionality and customizable features, it’s crucial to ensure both are working perfectly for your specific needs. As the leading CRM, Salesforce has likely covered the standard functionalities. However, it’s important to focus on rigorously testing the custom flows and functionalities your company has implemented.
Understanding Salesforce QA
Salesforce is a complex, flexible platform that frequently undergoes updates, so it’s important to test it regularly. These updates can introduce potential problems along with new features and enhancements. By testing thoroughly you help maintain the performance and stability of essential business operations that rely on Salesforce.
As businesses update and adopt new Salesforce features based on internal requirements and timelines, testing can sometimes take a backseat. However, neglecting thorough testing can lead to system failures, data integrity issues, and disruptions in business processes. To maintain a seamless user experience and ensure operational efficiency, it’s vital to test Salesforce apps thoroughly and ensure their reliability and performance.
Testing can be performed both manually, and automated. If you see that you are constantly testing the same things, it’s a good idea to automate those tests for better efficiency.
Five Common Salesforce Use Cases
We will now look at some of the most important customizations available in Salesforce, and how these should be used to achieve the best results.
Custom Object Data Validation
Salesforce allows the creation of custom objects based on your organization’s needs. The main goal of this use case is to verify that custom objects and fields created in Salesforce (for example, custom leads, opportunities, cases, etc.) store data correctly and that any custom validation rules or triggers function as expected.
What you should focus on:
- Validate that the required fields are enforced during data entry;
- Validate that the data types such as dates, texts,and picklists match their specified schema.
- Test validation rules for specific conditions (such as “Close Date” cannot be earlier than the “Created Date”).
- Validate that triggers on custom objects work for example auto-updating related records).
User Profile and Permission Set Functionality
Another customizable part of Salesforce is the user profiles and permission sets. These refer to access to custom processes or tools and functions. If your company chooses to create custom profiles and permission sets, it’s important that they are tested and work as expected.
Here are the main scenarios to cover:
- Users with different profiles (Admin, Sales Rep, Manager) have different access levels to custom and standard objects.
- Users can only access the records they can see based on sharing rules and role hierarchies.
- Permission sets grant the expected access (for example – access to specific custom fields or objects).
- Restricted data (think sensitive fields) is not visible to unauthorized users.
Custom Workflow Rules and Automation
Workflow rules can be used to automate adjustments to Salesforce connections and records. Workflows can be used for various tasks, such as changing picklist values when a connection modifies a field. Any field you subscribed to will activate workflow rules if your company is configured to accept records automatically. To make sure that these are correctly set up, QAs need to test custom workflows, approval processes, and automation in Salesforce to ensure that they are triggered under the correct conditions and perform as intended.
Here are the main flows to verify:
- Verify that workflows (such as email alerts, field updates, or task creation) are triggered in the correct conditions.
- Validate that the approval processes function correctly, including routing approval requests to the right users.
- Test custom automation built with Process Builder or Flow to ensure the correct actions flow.
- Validate that automated actions like record updates, notifications, and task assignments happen in real time.
Reports and Dashboards Customization
There are many ways in which the reports and Dashboards can be customized in Salesforce, so use cases that check that they work according to the specifications are important.
Some of the main scenarios you should focus on for reports and dashboards are:
- Verify that custom reports pull the correct data from custom objects and fields.
- Test dynamic filtering and grouping functionality for accurate report outputs.
- Validate that the dashboards accurately reflect report data and are updated in real-time.
- Check the permissions to access specific reports and dashboards based on user roles.
Third-Party Integration Testing
Another important feature of Salesforce is integration with other systems. Your company can use the integrations already provided by Salesforce (such as Jira, Slack, or LinkedIn), or you can use APIs to integrate your own systems.
If you use third-party integrations with Salesforce, test the following scenarios:
- Verify that data is successfully imported from or exported to external systems (through APIs, middleware, or custom connectors).
- Test error handling when external systems are unavailable or return incorrect data.
- Ensure that data synchronization happens correctly, especially in real-time integrations (e.g., updates from external systems are reflected in Salesforce and vice versa).
Conclusions
Salesforce is an important CRM on the market so because of its high number of users, it’s also properly tested inside their own company. However, it also offers many customizations, as companies can implement their own custom objects and workflows, personalized reports, and user permissions, as well as integrate other systems. The most important Salesforce use cases that testers should focus on are related to the custom functionalities, that are specific to their own company. The tests can be done either manually or can be automated, what’s important is to make sure that the application meets the company’s needs and requirements and the experience goes smoothly.
